Mercy
by skipmcgee
Summary: The importance of a gift often depends on the person who's giving it.


**Title:** Mercy

**Author**: Skt23

**Genre**: Harry/Ron 3rd Person POV

**Rating:** PG-13 at most

**Warnings/Spoilers**: No big warnings, but spoilers for OotP

**Word Count**: app. 1900

**Summary**: The importance of the gift often depends on the person who's giving it.

**A/N**: Once again, short on the action (although there's an _incident _in this one), long on characterization. This was an awesome POV to write - not easy at all, but challenging in a good way. I sincerely hope I got it close to right. No beta, so let me know if you spot some whacked out spelling or canon-fact so I can improve it next time.

This is for aidendavis, who suggested the POV (I latched on and literally wrote it 20 minutes after I read his idea.) I hope this is what you were looking for (and if it's not, well, it's the best you're gonna get from me ).

Although most people would scoff at the idea, Severus Snape had always imagined himself to be a merciful person. He did believe in mercy, he had to, after the mercy he himself had been shown by Albus Dumbledore. It wasn't his problem that most people associated mercy with a bleeding-heart, which was something he most certainly was not. He was well aware most of his students assumed he didn't even have a heart, much less one that overflowed with compassion.

Still, in an attempt to not seem entirely ungrateful for the second chance he had been given, Snape would on occasion find a reason to be slightly less loathsome than usual. On this particular occasion the recipient was none other than Hogwart's most famous celebrity. And considering his dislike for the smarmy little know-it-all, Snape believed he had better receive some kind of future blessing for his actions.

It still irritated him, but Severus had to admit that lately there had been less for him to dislike about Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived had recently become The Boy Turned General in a war against one of the most evil wizards of all time, and his alterations over the past few months had been startling, to say the least. Severus, among others, had watched as Potter dived head-first into maturity with a speed and determination that was almost frightening, growing up in the blink of a magical eye. It was an almost immediate transition, and even Severus himself could find little fault in the way the boy stepped up to accept a future that most probably involved his own death.

Snape had met with Potter a little beyond the halfway point of summer break, and fully expected to find the same irritating, argumentative child he had been forced to teach every year for the last 6 years. Instead he found a man; a young man, but a man nonetheless. Apparently Potter had decided 6 years of watching people he loved and cared for being injured, tortured, and killed, not to mention his own parents' death, was quite enough. Snape, along with most everyone else around the boy, believed the death of the last owner of Number 12 Grimmauld Place had been the final straw. He wanted to fight, wanted to face the Dark Lord head on; more than that, he was determined to win.

He approached every lesson with startling intensity, throwing himself into whatever task was put before him until he had succeeded in making it submit to his ever more immoderate will. Snape was an observant man, and the changes he saw in his student forced him to wonder if such lessons were benefitting him in the long run. He most certainly intended to defeat Voldemort, but should he actually succeed Snape wasn't sure he'd be able to back down and join the rest of the Wizarding World again. Despite his inherent dislike for the boy years of teaching had forced an almost automatic response when his students were in danger, and at each lesson warning bells were constantly ringing in his head.

Although that might have just been from the force of whatever counter-spell Potter threw at him during their Occlumency lessons. It had become apparent that Potter needed to learn to protect his mind _immediately, _and Dumbledore had requested Snape not only increase the number of lessons but also their intensity. The time they spent together was not pleasant. Potter was improving at an incredible rate, hate and vengeance spurning him on to try harder each time. The boy was surly and difficult, and his attitude wore on the very last ragged threads of Snape's own nerves. The lessons very quickly became personal once again, each trying to cause the other the most damage.

It had been on only the most recent occasion when Snape had seen something that had made him step back in surprise. Recently the only memories he was retrieving from Potter's mind were short and clipped, and sometimes he was able to block him altogether. But Snape knew that the Dark Lord would not hold back, and so neither did he. It was a slight modification this time that did the boy in. Snape spat the curse out and although Potter attempted to block it, the curse was just different enough to catch him off balance, and before he could stop it, some of his memories came flooding to the Potions teacher.

Snape had stopped looking for hurtful memories, as Potter had begun to bring them forth himself, using them as fuel to keep his righteous anger burning hot and heavy. He was clearly looking for an excuse to lash out, and Snape refused to give him any ammunition. Instead he began to search for the more personal, private memories, and to his surprise found that this had perhaps been the better method all along. Potter was used to being ridiculed and embarrassed, and although it was certainly not a pleasant experience he wasn't unused to having his humiliations displayed for others. His private memories, though, he clung to with a conviction that ruled every Occlumency lesson he had. It was these memories- the happy, contented, and peaceful ones- that he cherished the most. It was also these memories he wanted to keep to himself, perhaps because he had so few of them.

This particular memory though, throughly unbalanced Snape. He had been unprepared to witness a young Harry Potter desperately kissing that red-haired Weasley he was always skulking around with. Nor had he expected to see a memory of the two boys, both shirtless, laying in the grass by some lake or pond, hands entwined, staring up at the sky. The simpleness and innocence of these thoughts stunned him, and for the first time in his life, he felt like a dirty old man for having witnessed them against the boy's will. The feeling was so disconcerting it gave him a long enough pause that Potter regained his footing.

He was hit with a spell that quite literally knocked the wind out of him, before slamming him back into the nearest wall. He grunted at the impact and collapsed to his knees, his chest burning as he struggled for air. So concerned was he with the imminent need for breath, that he missed the beginning part of Potter's rant- although he did not miss the way the air in the room suddenly crackled with energy.

Potter was screaming at him now, and Snape realized simultaneously that he had apparently not been really challenging the boy if he was so unused to having his memories ripped from him, and that he had crossed some line had not been aware existed. Potter ranted at him, so entirely caught up in his fury Snape was sure he had no idea what he was saying, otherwise he never would have been so candid. He stormed out of the room, slamming the door hard enough behind him the heavy wood used in most of Grimmauld Place cracked horizontally from the knob. Snape felt the energy in the room follow the boy out, and stared ahead, his mind already processing and attempting to understand what he had just heard and seen.

As he sat in his home later, Snape admitted to himself he was a little surprised; like most people, he had assumed Granger would have been the one who earned Potter's affections. But he suspected that was just because he had been trained to see things that way, and it was an automatic assumption based more on what they were than who they were. No doubt the youngest Weasley boy spent just as much time around Potter as Miss Granger did, and of the two of them Weasley seemed to get along with him better.

He replayed the scenes in his mind's eye, and was repeatedly surprised by how wholly young and peaceful Potter looked. Having been the recipient of most of the boy's negative emotions he wasn't used to seeing such a look on his face. Potter had said when screaming at him that he had no right to look at such things, that they weren't his to see, and that _no one_ was going to take those memories from him. Snape thought that more likely than not, Potter just didn't want any of his memories regarding the Weasley boy soiled or tainted in any way. And for a boy who was facing down his own death in a way that most men would flinch from, Snape supposed it wasn't too much to ask.

It did occur to him, however, that should Harry Potter do the impossible and defeat You-Know-Who in some climactic battle, his return to normalcy would probably only occur with the help of his red-headed friend. Perhaps that was the reason Potter hung on to those memories like grim death; to have something to look forward to, or a reason to go on. As someone who had never really felt that way about anyone, Severus found it hard to imagine; but if it kept the boy going, he wasn't going to question it.

And that was the reason why he showed Potter what he considered mercy. He didn't tell anyone what he had seen, and continued with his lessons as though the whole thing had never happened. For his part, Potter didn't seemed inclined to discuss it any more than Snape himself, and the two easily fell back into their routine of insults and bad-tempered arguments. The next time Snape wrung a memory from the boy to do with his Weasley- this one in the same bedroom as before, with Weasley whispering a silencing spell on his doorway before turning and essentially pouncing on his best friend- there was no attack, verbal or otherwise. There was just angry resignation and the determination to not let it happen again. Apparently Potter believed he would keep his secret; and for some reason, Severus did. Nor did he ridicule the boy, something which, truth be told, surprised them both.

And when all those nosy members of Dumbledore's rag-tag team of misfits asked what was wrong with Harry Potter, what had caused him to lash out in that room, Severus had said he didn't know and quite frankly didn't care. It was a mercy he probably wouldn't have shown anyone else.

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